


breaking, bruising

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [52]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, M/M, some intense making out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 03:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11958474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: Atsushi had bent his own prickly angles against Tatsuya’s, inhaled all of him, all of his hard-edged diamond dust ground fine beneath heels in American streets, stretched thin across miles and clouded skies.





	breaking, bruising

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 7: Free For All | originally posted [here](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/25713.html?thread=16337265#cmt16337265)

He remembers the first time he saw Atsushi cry. He will not remember the second.

He will not remember it, for Atsushi will swear afterwards, in the daylight, that it had never happened, that Muro-chin had mistaken the sweat on his brow for something else. What Tatsuya knows he has not mistaken is the awkward way they fit together behind locked doors, Atsushi’s chest heaving under Tatsuya’s palm, the heat of him. Tatsuya had half-expected rejection, built a beautiful glass wall around his heart in readiness. It had shattered.

Atsushi had bent his own prickly angles against Tatsuya’s, inhaled all of him, all of his hard-edged diamond dust ground fine beneath heels in American streets, stretched thin across miles and clouded skies. He had trembled with his face buried in Tatsuya’s neck, and then there had been no more space for breathing.

It’s not how Tatsuya had ever imagined, if he’d ever imagined such a thing. Perhaps he had dreamt it. He couldn’t say, now.

Atsushi, even from the corner of his eye, is an unmissable presence. He doesn’t try to catch anyone’s notice. He simply cannot help it. And it is this, thinks Tatsuya, that has made him pliant in surprising ways; for all his protestations and languor, he’s never said no to Tatsuya when it counts. It is as if some part of him is paying a wilful penance for how much space he takes up.

So Tatsuya had made a point of not asking, and Atsushi had not said anything.

A kiss, Tatsuya’s learned, can be a savage thing; teeth and tongue against bottom lips dry from the sun, the tang of lemon popsicles and cola and salt, a strange cocktail that made Tatsuya smile, for no one but Atsushi would taste like this. There had been a candy wrapper still lying on the floor from where Atsushi dropped it, a crinkle that echoed like a guilty whisper as Atsushi moved his feet, tried to shift his weight back, only Tatsuya had not let him.

That was not when the tears started pricking. That had come later. This—a fistful of Atsushi’s jersey in his balled up grip, his hair loose around his shoulders, brushing Tatsuya’s cheeks—

This was a low hiss between Atsushi’s mouth, a furnace simmering, something uncoiling, waking. Tatsuya had never seen Atsushi quite so _alive_ , heard him make a sound like that. He had not known his own pulse could rage in his ears like this either.

Atsushi, he knows, will ask him about the bruise under his shirt when he notices it. He will not talk about many things, about Tatsuya’s glass-shard laugh when he pushed him up against the wall, about coming undone, and that suits Tatsuya fine. They don’t have to talk about it. They don’t have to talk about this either, the fingerprints he pressed into Tatsuya’s skin, the saltwater streaks he left there.

Tatsuya keeps his sleeves rolled down, thinks of tonight and the lights going out.


End file.
